Teen Read Week Staff Picks

I am a big fan of young adult literature. My mother has been a third grade teacher since I was born, so we always had plenty of chapter books in the house. I’ve read the classics and the school assignments, but it was the books with castles, princes, fairies, and magic that always had me hooked. Therefore, it’s no shock that I’m a big fan of the current vampire craze (but just the gushy love story side of it—the blood creeps me out). I am also very excited about the newest trend: fallen angels. All the vampire bad boy hotness without the blood? Sign me up!

In honor of Teen Read Week, which we posted about on Tuesday, our staff has chosen their favorite recent young adult book and their favorite of all time. Check them out and feel free to add your own in the comments.

Yours truly
Favorite YA book of all time
Even though this assignment is self-imposed, I must let you know it’s very hard for me to pick a favorite of anything. No matter what the subject is, I feel like I have at least ten favorites (especially dessert). But, since I must narrow it down, I choose Robin McKinley’s The Blue Sword. McKinley was one of the first fantasy authors I read, and she really got me hooked on the genre. She does such a great job setting up a new, realistic world that you can get absorbed in. The Blue Sword tells the story of feisty (female) orphan Harry and her capture by golden-eyed king of the hills, Corlath, who knows she will soon become the savior of his country. She becomes a warrior and wields the famed Blue Sword (and eventually forgives him for the kidnapping stunt).

Favorite recent YA book
I finished Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr the day I arrived in Frankfurt for the book fair. I tried really hard not to finish it because I only brought one book and the plane trip is very long, but I couldn’t help it—it’s one of those books that pulls you in. Wicked Lovely follows Aislinn, a semi-normal high schooler with both a close friend who is ultra sweet and in love with her and a stalker who happens to be a fairy king. The fairy king has sought her out as his co-ruler and wants her to leave her mortal life to save his fairy court. However, Aislinn has a secret the fairies don’t know—she can see them. And that is not a good thing. Marr’s fairies are human-sized and scary. Some are beautiful, some resemble animals, many are skinny and angular, and most of them are mean: tripping, poking, and otherwise harassing the “blind” humans. Needless to say, Aislinn isn’t as flattered by the fairy king’s attentions as he expected. The book follows their struggles and really isn’t what I was expecting. I loved it and have already started into book two (which I picked up as soon as I landed back in Texas). Side note: I didn’t realize how close these two books were until rereading this article. I guess, while I do not condone stalking and kidnapping, they seem to be common threads in the books I read.

Erin
Favorite YA book of all time
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
I'm not going to bother writing up a summary, because everyone knows the basics about this book, even if they've never read it. Some might consider it a children's book, but I think it qualifies as YA, if for no other reason than that it will inspire (nay, compel) you to read the other books in the Anne series. Like Harry Potter, Anne Shirley ages gracefully throughout the series, starting at eleven (again like Harry) and continuing through middle age and motherhood. Montgomery creates a much larger world in the fictional town of Avonlea, (located in Prince Edward Island, Canada) and its inhabitants, than the Anne series could contain, inspiring sequels and spinoffs galore. If you haven't read this one in a while, pick it up and reread it (or, better yet, read it to a kid). It will definitely charm you all over again. (For a much, much better critique, read the one written by Meghan O'Rourke for Slate on the occasion of Anne's recent 100th birthday.)

Favorite recent YA book
Generation Dead by Daniel Waters
The book focuses on a love triangle between Goth-girl Phoebe Kendall, her friend Adam, and the new boy in school, Tommy. Sounds like typical teen romance...except that Tommy is dead, or "differently biotic." No one knows why dead teenagers have started coming back to life (though it's mostly attributed to a combination of "teenage hormones and fast food preservatives"), but it's happening all over the U.S. Though the Oakvale High administration is fairly supportive of these "living impaired" teens, most of the students aren't happy about it, and a few are determined to rid their town of the dead kids. When Phoebe develops a crush on Tommy, Adam, who is supportive of Tommy and the zombies, realizes he is in love with her and would do anything for her...even if that means protecting Tommy and the other dead teens from his own living friends.

Waters does an incredible job of seamlessly blending the absurd and bizarre into the everyday. The book is equal parts quirkiness, dark humor, and pathos, and it has a terrific surprise ending. I just bought the sequel (Kiss of Life), and I can't wait to read it.

Katie
Favorite YA book of all time
Hands down, my favorite YA book of all time is The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. Technically, this book may be geared toward preteens, but I reread it as a teen (and as an adult, for that matter), and still loved it as much as I did when I read it for the first time. In fact, I love it so much that I named my dog after the main character, a plucky girl with a penchant for kicking shins and solving mysteries. And while I have a soft spot for any book with an underage detective—Nancy Drew, Encyclopedia Brown, and Harriet the Spy (more a snoop than a detective, but still), to name a few—The Westing Game is by far the most fun.

Lauren
Favorite YA book of all time
As I started thinking about YA novels, I remembered so many that were dear to me when I was younger: The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Where the Red Fern Grows, Island of the Blue Dolphins, and more. It would be impossible to pick a single favorite, but one of the most memorable ones was Phillip Pullman’s The Golden Compass (there seems to be a colorful theme going on here). This might be a little blasphemous, but I always wonder why people are reading Harry Potter when they could be reading a much better YA series about teenagers with magical powers. The Golden Compass and its sequels, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass, chronicle the adventures of a young girl named Lyra from an alternate version of our world and a boy named Will from regular old England. It has all the fun of Harry Potter (in Lyra’s world, people even have animal familiars as constant companions) but it’s much more well written, intellectual, and morally challenging. I still haven't seen the movie version, because I can't face what will almost certainly be a disappointing adaptation.

Favorite recent YA book
A YA novel I read more recently that absolutely blew me away was Manstealing for Fat Girls by Michelle Embree. It tells the story of a high schooler named Angie who has to deal with a number of things that all too many high schoolers have to deal with: sex, drugs, alcohol, bullies, and a dysfunctional family life. It’s more intense than a Dan Brown thriller, and I’ve never read anything else that so perfectly captures the chaos of being a teenager and trying to figure out where you belong in the world...though my teenage years were considerably less exciting than Angie’s.

Caitlin
I read mostly adult fiction when I was a teenager (I worked in a library and I remember reading Anna Quindlen and Anita Shreve), but I can still recall a few of the YA books that I read and liked when I was growing up. I was a fan of The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot (before it became a movie) and I Am Regina by Sally Keehn (the fascinating story of a ten-year-old girl captured by American Indians). I also read quite a few series, including the Babysitters Club, Trixie Belden, and Little House on the Prairie.

Coincidentally, I'll actually be reading a YA book for the first time in a while this month. The pick for our next book club meeting is The Book Thief by Markus Zusak and I'm looking forward to reading something different than what I normally would pick out.

Michelle
I confess, I haven’t read many lately, but when looking at the goodreads list of the best young adult novels, I realized that YA might be one of my favorite genres. Or that I had more books than friends in junior high. My three favorites of all time are:

Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine, a great retelling of Cinderella in which Ella must follow any command given to her, even if it could place her in danger. The book is loaded with fantastic sensory descriptions (Ella’s best friend is described as having cinnamon skin with a hint of raspberry in her cheeks), and I’m a sucker for magic and Cinderella.

A Separate Peace by John Knowles–I always liked this coming-of-age story more than The Catcher in the Rye. Don’t get me wrong, J.D., I hold your story dear, but the friendship and jealousy between Phineas and Gene always got to me, and so did sentences like this: “I wanted to break out crying from stabs of hopeless joy, or intolerable promise, or because these mornings were too full of beauty for me, because I knew of too much hate to be contained in a world like this.” (Knowles 47)

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card–It’s a sci-fi book about very intelligent children. Hollie’s review on goodreads sums it up perfectly. Here is a snippet:

"‘They have a word for people our age. They call us children and they treat us like mice.’ If you can't understand that statement, you probably won't like this book. It's about intelligent children. Not miniature adults–their motivations, understanding, and sometimes naiveté clearly mark them as children. But at the same time their intelligence and inner strength define them clearly as people. Their personalities are fully developed, even if their bodies are not.”